


a feeling easy as life

by cuubism



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Experimenting with Form, M/M, Magic Loss, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Poetry, Post-Episode: s03e10 Erchomai, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:49:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21751753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuubism/pseuds/cuubism
Summary: Alec kisses the divot of his hipbone as he rises, and then he’s standing again before Magnus, looking at him with incurable gentleness.(Magnus is no longer fire and fury, and he no longer knows what to do with such gentleness. He wants to let it subsume him, but he’s never been good at swimming.)“You are still wearing a lot of clothes, Alexander,” he says.post-magic loss: clutter. emptiness. trying to find a new balance.a sort-of-prose-piece, sort-of-poem.
Relationships: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood
Comments: 20
Kudos: 97





	a feeling easy as life

**Author's Note:**

> additional content warning for _very subtle, very implied_ mentions of self-harm/suicidal ideation. just in case.

_ I say to you: be still,  
my love,  
your life has known too much  
movement.  
_

Sometimes Magnus feels like a library, his insides brimming with magical theory, love stories, knowledge exalted and trivial, his body an archive of grievances. It’s too much for one mind to hold, and he wishes he could pour himself out, scrape his heart of all the junk it contains —

(it feels like junk, sometimes)  


— but then he would be a well-ornamented shell, and no longer useful.

Magnus doesn’t want to think about that. He wants to think about the weight of the glass in his hand, the amber swirl of the brandy swishing around the bottom, and not about— 

(the loft is so cluttered sometimes, all these relics of past lives, _his_ past lives, which are also his current life, and oh god, _oh god,_ the weight of all those years is crashing down on top of—)  


— the door swinging open, and then shut again, with a soft click. 

It’s been a while since he last drank brandy. He’d forgotten how smoothly it went down.

_ drop the glass from your trembling hand,_  
_the clothes from your body_ —  


And there is Alec. All in black, the lines of his body soft and contained. Magnus tosses his drink behind the couch. 

_ I will hold you now.  _

“You don’t have to hide anything,” Alec says, watching the almost-slow-motion arc of the glass and glistening drops of brandy, freed to spin in the air. 

“I’m not.” — _it’s too late for that_ — “I’m just. Making room.” Magnus holds out his now-empty hand to Alec, who takes it but, instead of sitting, pulls Magnus to his feet. 

Magnus stands on shaky legs. He has been so shaky since—

Alec is picking at the buttons on Magnus’s shirt. Magnus stills his wrist with a hand. “Alec…” Magnus hates to deny him, but—

“Not that,” Alec says. “I— that’s not what I’m asking for.” 

“Then…?” 

“I just want to hold you? If that’s okay.” 

“Yes,” Magnus exhales. “Yes, okay.” 

_ we will not sway,  
_ _ and there will be no  
_ _ music playing.  
_

Alec’s fingers brush again at his shirt, delicately plucking each button from its hold, and Magnus keeps a hand lightly on his wrist. Not waiting to stop, just feeling. His fluttering pulse, the pull of tendons and crackle of the joint as it bends. 

(oh, that’s right: they are embodied. They are bodies, they are not just collections of words colliding in a haze. They are not just memories.)  


Magnus’s shirt is off. The loft is warm, and he doesn’t shiver. Not from cold, anyway.

Alec is still fully clothed, but he drops down on one knee to untie Magnus’s boots. This feels like unbalance. Magnus finds he doesn’t mind, and lets it happen anyway. 

Boots, socks. Pants, boxers. Magnus watches the flex of Alec’s shoulder muscles under his shirt, the intent angle of his gaze. Feels the warm rough pads of his fingers along his ankles, knees, thighs.

_ your bare skin will feel warm   
_ _ and predictable against mine,  
_

Alec kisses the divot of his hipbone as he rises, and then he’s standing again before Magnus, looking at him with incurable gentleness. 

(Magnus is no longer fire and fury, and he no longer knows what to do with such gentleness. He wants to let it subsume him, but he’s never been good at swimming.)  


“You are still wearing a lot of clothes, Alexander,” he says. 

“I just want to look at you for a second,” Alec murmurs. And he looks at him. And he looks. And Magnus wants to hide, and doesn’t want to. He feels unwound, and re-knitted. He feels fallen and caught.

_ and you will not know   
_ _ what to do with that.   
_

“...okay,” Alec says, and Magnus hears the swallowed words:  _ you are not  _ (okay),  _ you are not, you are not you are not _ — __

Magnus tugs Alec’s shirt over his head. He knows. Magnus knows that he’s not— 

There’s a scar there, still, on Alec’s bare chest.

Mottled and puckered and breaking the simple planes of his skin. 

Magnus swallows. 

“Later,” Alec says, as diversion. He runs a hand through his hair, nervously. 

(Alec is not okay, Magnus thinks, and it’s enough to freeze him, even though he knew it already. It makes him want to cut down to the core of himself and  _ yank,  _ even though he knows he won’t find anything there.)  


Magnus tries to unbutton Alec’s jeans. His hands are shaking. He doesn’t know what is happening right now, just knows that it feels right, that he needs, needs— 

_ you will want to ask:  
_ _ what does this all mean?  
_

Alec pushes down the rest of his clothes — 

_ and I will say:  _

— and takes Magnus in his arms — 

_ it means you are here  
_ _ in my arms,   
_

— and skin on skin is like feeling fire again.

Magnus had thought he was warm enough. How wrong he was. He feels his thoughts even out, just a little. Enough for him to be able to see again properly. 

_ that your bones still reach to the sky  
_ _ and down to earth,  
_

And Alec is solid against him. Their knees bump, their bellies exhale into each other. Alec’s stubble grazes Magnus’s ear, and it is not painful. It feels like...an opening —

_ that your muscles stretch over them,  
_ _ that your organs shift  
_ _ in the spaces between  _ —  


— an opening of his chest, and he is being scooped out but not emptied, his contents examined and righted so that the jumbled nightmare finds some order, but even when they are first taken out, and his chest cavity is a shell of bone and flesh he finds —

that he is not found lacking. That blood and fat and muscle is  _ enough _ even with no knowledge, no fame, no power. That  _ he _ is 

(dare he say it?)  


enough. 

_ that you are here.   
_ _ (from the ground up  
_ _ to the tips of your hair you are   
_ _ here)   
_

Alec wraps tighter around him, doesn’t move, doesn’t sway, just breathes into Magnus’s hair, the scar tissue in his chest scraping lightly at Magnus’s heart, letting his stillness become all that there is. 

_ and I am here,  
_ _ and nothing else need  
_ _ matter.   
_

Out there, there is magic, and Magnus longs for it. His skin has been itching to shed, to free his restless soul to dart through the air in search of that which sustains it. He has been willing to accept that that will break him apart, one way or the other. 

(but Magnus is not one-dimensional, a being of one appetite. There can, maybe, be other forms of sustenance. It is, after all, a matter of life or—)  


_ breathe, if you need to.  
_

Magnus lets himself breathe in. Just for this moment. 

Just for this moment, just  _ this  _ moment, just—

_ I will absorb the vibrations.  _

The soft strands of Alec’s hair. The slow evening light. The smooth glide of the floorboards. Magnus is no longer thinking. Magnus is— 

He will settle. He will let himself settle. He will let himself be held. He will let himself be.

(This is not belief, it is substitution. One truth for another against a thousand stacked a mile high. But it is progress. It is movement found within the stillness.)  


He feels, more than hears, Alec’s voice:  _ it may not be okay, but you are safe with me.  _

_ my chest is big enough   
to contain   
us both.  
_

**Author's Note:**

> title vaguely inspired by that one quote from _The Raven Boys_ : "is this thing safe?" "safe as life"
> 
> in case you were wondering, the sort-of-poem woven throughout is also mine (i.e., not someone else's work that I used without citing)
> 
> come find me on tumblr if you like: @cuubism


End file.
